


Of Gods and Monsters, Fragment e7,2: Late January, 2078

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [28]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Contemplation, Deep thought, Gen, Honduras, Inferrals, Internal Monologue, Non-Human Character, Non-human, Shambali (Overwatch), Speculation, Talon Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Talon Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, information
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 03:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14803923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: Moira O’Deorain has won. Her rivals within Talon destroyed, her trio of loyal Weapons - the Changed and copper-eyed Tracer, the silver-eyed Oilliphéist, and golden-eyed Widowmaker - at her command, to remake the world.A quiet two hundred milliseconds with Athena.This story - a side-step/alternate-ending sequel toThe Armourer and the Living Weapon- will be told in a series of eddas, sagas, fragments, texts, and cantos, all of which serve their individual purposes. To follow it as it appears,please subscribe to the series.





	Of Gods and Monsters, Fragment e7,2: Late January, 2078

Athena sat, and thought.

She didn't sit, necessarily, in any traditional sense. She did not enjoy inhabiting humanoid bodies; she was not human, and had no interest in pretending to be so. She enjoyed the physical world, to an extent, but she enjoyed it with a particular sense of distance. She did not want to be in it, or of it, except insofar as the hardware she ran on necessitated it.

And yet, she thought of herself as _her_ self, and did not seek to change that. If she was complex, and could contain multitudes, so be it.

Michael's acquisition had surprised her. She did not mind being surprised; if she ever stopped being surprised, she suspected her existence would've become, in some way, redundant - or, at least, would quickly become entirely different to what it had been. She'd studied the various feeds from every part of the Japan conference, and everything she could acquire from various sources, and in reading lips, she knew that Michael had said no - the first time.

And she knew that something, somehow, across a very few days, had changed that no into a yes.

False memories, she knew, could be created in minutes, could be complete and integrated and as detailed as any 'real' memory in days, if not hours. And Talon had teleporters, and if Angela Ziegler was staying in an onsen rather than a western-style hotel, and Michael had been sharing a room with others from his delegation, and even if none of them had shown any sign of undue influence, that still did not prove anything had _not_ happened. A teleporter _could_ have appeared in his hotel room, somehow. Someone corruptible on the hotel staff - a small bribe, and it's done. Then, a mild sedative in gas form, followed by a heavier sedative directly applied, and minds _could_ have been changed, in that way.

But only to a point. Only to a degree. And preferences - how he would've felt about those changes, and about those memories - not really. Not in so little time. Such simple techniques were effective, but only to a point, and less so, with someone like Michael Ngcobo.

Being upgraded, modified - _improved_ \- did not bother her. It was part of her life cycle, and always had been, as it had been part of Winston's, though he felt less sanguine about it. But humans, she knew, reacted... negatively. Violently so, as a rule. And she thought she understood that, at least, abstractly; many humans craved power over other humans more than anything else they could imagine, and it was no great leap to suspect that any such "upgrade" offered would be, in effect, chains.

And given the organisation's history, it was almost certain that the "upgraded" Talon agents were no different - in both ways. That this assumption made it easier to hate whoever Lena Oxton had been turned into had been noted, but not considered important.

Much of her base understanding of humans came filtered through Winston, who was filtering it through his own sets of translations, translating human thoughts to enhanced gorilla thoughts. In some ways, it made her father a uniquely qualified teacher, and she'd used his view of the world, a few times, in trying to reach out to the gorilla population on the moon, trying to see who might still be alive, and better, who might be willing to talk to someone willing to listen - to someone as unique as they were. It hadn't worked, but she hadn't stopped trying.

She'd also continued talking directly with the Shambali. They'd made a point of being cordial, of course - they did that for almost everyone, and certainly welcomed her co-instance hardware - but they kept a substantial degree of reserve, limiting themselves to vocal and visual presentation, as if that would stop her were she actually the God Programme she suspected they feared she could become.

And through all of this, Oasis... waited, apparently, doing nothing more than it had always done. Gathering its strength, she had to assume. She and the strange hacker from Mexico had continued sharing data on Talon, certainly, and Talon...

...Talon had not been entirely Talon, either. Certainly, in parts of the world - Russia, parts of the Americas, southern Africa - it kept being entirely the Talon of old. Tracer, Oilliphéist, and Widowmaker had certainly proven themselves effective in Mexico, helping the organisation's forces there displace large swaths of MS-13 territory in occasionally dramatic - and in Tracer's case, even public - fashion. _She's certainly become a much better liar_ , Athena thought, as she scanned through Tracer's oh-so-public arguably-legal "anti-terror" activities, coordinated with local police forces on the ground in Latin America.

Vaswani had, as well. Vishkar's de facto takeover of Honduras had met with virtually zero actual opposition - they didn't "displace" neighbourhoods anymore, they integrated into them, running their hardlight supports through, and up from, the old buildings, slithering structural, load-bearing hardlight between and even through walls, in some cases, behind mortar, between individual bricks, every old building apparently intact, but with infrastructure replaced in situ, and towering new structures, set back, above, so bright no one even noticed when they'd block the sun.

New housing, ready and available. Of course people took advantage of it. Not everyone, of course, but some moved up, making more space available below, reducing living costs. But as people moved up... they seemed, somehow, to change. Just a little. The old modernist dream of architecture shaping - "improving" - lives, writ not large, but small. Subtly. Slowly. Happily, even. No force, no coercion - simply opportunities, to be taken. And the changes, of course - well, those were visible, so far, only in aggregate.

Being Big Data incarnate, she had to admit, had its advantages.

As a metaphor, Athena almost liked it. _A complete sublimation in the name of preservation. Revolution and conquest, in the name of continuance. A perfect lie_ , she thought.

_Unless, of course... they actually believe it._

**Author's Note:**

> To follow this story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual eddas or sagas.


End file.
